At first there was too much feeling so she cut out her heart and fed it to a crying lion cub. She meaning you. Yes. But the lion cub was really her new kitten. She didn’t have enough milk. Is that all? No, there were other things she never had enough of: greens, window blinds, validation. She isn’t ready for summer to begin. She likes the way the branches make fractal designs in shadow on her front door. More than the sidewalk? Yes, and she likes the sounds her shoes make on pavement. She likes the empty space surrounding her to be wholly without meaning. She wants to be alone. That sounds overly isolationist. Sounds like freedom. And her hands? Her hands keep turning into birds and flying away from her. Her being you. Yes. Do you love yourself? I don’t have to answer that. It should matter. She has two dozen different black shoulder bags, but none of them are the right size. She is still searching. She buys one every week, just in case it is the one. It should matter. She has a diamond stud in her nose but it doesn’t matter. She wrote ten poems yesterday but it doesn’t matter. This is how she stays alone. Everything is red and newspapers are printed on the soles of shoes, the backs of hands. You miss the point: bookcases are only bookcases when they hold books. All of the letters are lost and scrambled. Like the time the pages flew from the car and got lost at the ocean shore? Yes. Pages flying floating until they turned into birds. What’s with the birds? Everyone nests, then everyone leaves. There is truth in migration. If you make it. What else? She cannot see her hands in the dark. They disappear under the shelter of the moon even when the moon is lifted in a pirouette. She meaning you. And you. Everyone leaves. Every relationship must end, it is the nature of us. We are impermanent. Even stones. What else would stones be? Immortal. Bounded. Discovered on the backs of glaciers, in the hollow of trees. Birds don’t need stones to nest. No, but I do. Where are your hands now? Turned to feathers, feathers, turned to down, stuffed into pillows. Place your head here, carefully.

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